Lore Errata

Its been stated that Paizo does not have a good mechanism for performing lore errata, so when lore mistakes get made, there is no good way to fix it aside from publishing new material. Also, letting mistakes linger, or having to treat a mistake as intentional is stressful and harmful to the creators.

As a comic book fan, I enjoy a good retcon to explain something that was an error. And I've come to understand that sometimes its best just to sweep something under the rug and move along.

But, I noticed the rumblings the other day about how The World's Most Popular Role Playing Game just issued sweeping errata for several of their monsters. Its part of some large scale changes they've been making in response to criticisms that company has received re: monsters and alignment.

Now, Paizo and Wizards of the Coast operate on scales wildly different from each other. I do not and cannot expect the two companies to be able to respond to things in a similar way. Also, I'm the last person on the internet who likes alignment in TTRPGs and my solution to alignment problems has always been, Lean Into It More. So, certainly my input on the subject is circumspect at best.

I've mostly concerned myself with Pathfinder and The World's Most Popular Role Playing Game for the last several years, so I'm not as widely versed in other Game systems. I don't know how other companies handle it. I don't even know what is the best solution.

Its been on my mind a lot, especially as we're seeing it play out in real time.

Idunno. Thoughts?

What Lore errata?

Are you taking the stated opinion of A Single Dwarf in a particular Setting of the World's Most Popular Role Playing Game as official, infallible canon?

If you are, then that gives you a really good idea why it was removed.

As to how other systems handle it: they generally don't or, if they do, typically face some manner of critique about their approach.

The drive to build sprawling, holistic settings with encyclopedic lore is largely the domain of games spawned by D&D or those games that try/tried to compete in that sphere. Generally, games have more of a meta-genre setting that gets filled in by the players.

If all your experience is with D&D/Pathfinder/Shadowrun (or similar-scope games), it is easy to think that "big setting what explains everything" is a no brainer. However, as we're seeing, there are deep and complex issues with maintaining a setting long-term in a publisher-consumer capacity. Even where games DO publish something resembling a complete setting, they tend to avoid certain topics. The reasons could be many but generally, from the indie rpg space, it is about consent and allowing people to choose how they interact with the games/settings.

What Lore errata?

Are you taking the stated opinion of A Single Dwarf in a particular Setting of the World's Most Popular Role Playing Game as official, infallible canon?

If you are, then that gives you a really good idea why it was removed.

I suppose I shouldn't have been so vague. An article. Someone on reddit went to the effort of consolidating the removed text.

I don't have any particular objections to it, being that WotC and Paizo can do whatever they want with their IP.

Wizards of the Coast can probably do these sort of things because they publish relatively few books in comparison to Paizo, who have traditionally reserved errata for mechanical things or outright typographical errors.

Even where games DO publish something resembling a complete setting, they tend to avoid certain topics. The reasons could be many but generally, from the indie rpg space, it is about consent and allowing people to choose how they interact with the games/settings.

I suppose that indie books don't have the problems of having to update material for a setting that's been continuously published for decades. Shadowrun and Mechwarrior come to mind, but I suppose there are few static worlds in the TTRPG space with the kind of longevity that make it necessary.

I suppose I was vague earlier because I'm less interested in the what was errated and more so the how of it.

Paizo tends to just stop mentioning things because their system doesn't really allow them the opportunity to go back to a work and remove or correct that kind of text and even then, I don't recall any Player Companion books getting errata.

Changing the books is what WotC went with in this instance and it can work for them, I imagine.

I've been seeing a few opinions here on the boards about making change to lore diageticaly or organically, which comes with its own suite of issues.

From a business perspective, I can see that a company goes with the one they can do, given their current restrictions.

I mean. The real answer is to free the world from the shackles of capitalism so people can just make their art or whatever but that isn't this conversation nor one I think this forum (or most others, tbf) is capable of engaging honestly.

Secret Wizard wrote:

What Lore errata?

Are you taking the stated opinion of A Single Dwarf in a particular Setting of the World's Most Popular Role Playing Game as official, infallible canon?

If you are, then that gives you a really good idea why it was removed.

I suppose I shouldn't have been so vague. An article. Someone on reddit went to the effort of consolidating the removed text.

I don't have any particular objections to it, being that WotC and Paizo can do whatever they want with their IP.

Wizards of the Coast can probably do these sort of things because they publish relatively few books in comparison to Paizo, who have traditionally reserved errata for mechanical things or outright typographical errors.

My point was that the removed sections are opinions from Volo about the monsters, made as generalizations of their entire race.

They were problematic in the sense that they were giving readers the impression either:

A) There's such things as racial absolutes, or
B) Volo himself believed so, which made him kind of villainous?

So the lore itself has not been errata'd, what's been taken out are Volo's comments, which were unreliable since the get go – that was the framing device of the book!

Taking them as lore that should have been respected in game was actually to the detriment of setting.

Taking it as "oh, Volo's a quack!" would have been ideal, but we are not in an ideal world.

But ultimately... the whole point of WotC was for us to talk about it.

...

This is one of the problem with making rulebooks be "authored" by in lore people. It's way too easy to adding in something that would fit the character who is "writing" the book. But have it come out as being horrible or some weird thing.

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

I don’t understand why this is an “or,” rather than an “and.” Both are equally incorrect.

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

That's some of the stuff on Paizo side that I was thinking of, yes. We've seen it mentioned repeatedly over the years that things like this slipped through in the early days and because it went so long before a second printing of say Erastil's Deity article, people came to think of it as part of the character.

There's so many pages that Paizo puts out every year, I'm not surprised. But, aside from folks on the Paizo boards who read a lot of material and study it--Just moving past it and printing something correct seems like it works. Especially since the Erastil article was in an AP backmatter and Gods of the Inner Sea is a hardcover release that will outlast the likely out of print AP volume.

I consider it interesting in an apocryphal sense. Stuff that if printed in a comic book, we'd have to live with for a few years before another writer comes in and fixes it--in setting. And when it comes to something like Erastil being a misogynist, I can see why a company wouldn't want to have that be something considered true at all, ever.

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

These are among the most egregious and lingering lore errata we would love to be able to make. In both cases, we opted not to make editorial changes to the original material, and instead clarified in later products that neither a misogynist Erastil nor paladins of Asmodeus were things in our setting.

And, yeah, there's no real great way to address them, though the more content moves toward digital formats, the easier it gets, I assume. Though it doesn't change the fact that we have to balance going back to correct old mistakes with the opportunity cost of working on new content. It's a tough nut to crack.

Except they actually defended the Erastil Article at the time when it came out (Although knowing what we do now about certain aspects of the company there probably is a good chance that defence was mandated from on high.) and oh boy reading those threads 10+ years later they have not aged well.

Idk why but I do still feel like a bunch of murderhobo Vindictive Bastards (Actual PF1 Archetype) following Asmodeus and calling themselves actual Paladin is hilarious. The idea that you have this super strict group of people who would do anything "by the law" in order to get kills while you have another group specifically trying to stop them.

Idk it feels like the perfect scenario for another crusade AP.

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

Or even more recently. Anadi early in PF2 had their hybrid shape referred to as their true form. As of Mwangi that option is instead a feat and their spider form is their natural shape.

Except they actually defended the Erastil Article at the time when it came out (Although knowing what we do now about certain aspects of the company there probably is a good chance that defence was mandated from on high.)

Its not uncommon for employees or creatives to defend something early on. You see it in film and TV all the time. Upon release its Hype, Hype, Hype. You don't want to show non-enthusiasm for something you worked on and are selling. Its considered poor form in most cases, as I understand.

Kevin Mack wrote:

Except they actually defended the Erastil Article at the time when it came out (Although knowing what we do now about certain aspects of the company there probably is a good chance that defence was mandated from on high.)

Its not uncommon for employees or creatives to defend something early on. You see it in film and TV all the time. Upon release its Hype, Hype, Hype. You don't want to show non-enthusiasm for something you worked on and are selling. Its considered poor form in most cases, as I understand.

Possibly also it always has felt a bit like throwing the origonal writer under the bus (All the talk of Erastil being a misoginist being a mistake and that was never the intent all seemed to conveniantly start after the guy who wrote the articles left the company.)

Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins

This is factually true. Paladins are specifically lawful good champions. Asmodeus would have Tyrants, lawful evil champions.

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

I don't see a problem with either myself: deities should be multifaceted creatures and not everything about them SHOULD fit neatly in a single alignment box:

As one of the oldest human gods, it wouldn't be unusual for Erastil to be a bit more 'old school' or politically incorrect with his thinking: he gives unsolicited criticism and advocates for a simpler ways of life, free of the constraints of modern civilization. I'm not sure what exact issue there was in the lore so I can't really comment more.

As far as Asmodeus, that IMO make sense too. He forged the contract of creation, the Prince of Law could easily have a loophole to allow paladins and it would be the type of cosmic sleight of hand that would be perfect for him, to use the flaw upon Creation that is mortals, against his enemies or just to speed along the destruction of the mortal realms in a stratagems spanning millennia. If anyone could do it, it'd be him.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

I don't see a problem with either myself: deities should be multifaceted creatures and not everything about them SHOULD fit neatly in a single alignment box:

As one of the oldest human gods, it wouldn't be unusual for Erastil to be a bit more 'old school' or politically incorrect with his thinking: he gives unsolicited criticism and advocates for a simpler ways of life, free of the constraints of modern civilization. I'm not sure what exact issue there was in the lore so I can't really comment more.

The problem is that it then says “misogyny can be the conduct of a being of incarnate, cosmic Good.”

I never really saw alignment in a limited fashion. Good is more of a force in a D&D world. That force is always at war with its counterforce evil. Good and evil don't necessarily represent a personality.

Asmodeus is Lawful Evil, but he believes highly in law and order. He enforces laws against evil and thievery very harshly. He is very much against many evil behaviors, why being evil himself. Asmodeus is a cosmic force of evil whose doctrine inspires a very orderly, hierarchal society that some might think of as "good" or parts of it.
I'm not sure how many people have a problem when a cosmic force of evil has a code that someone might see as good.

It seems any time a cosmic force of good has a value someone might view as evil or negative, suddenly they aren't good even though they are 99% for good.

Makes it hard for a writer to give a deity a personality if people are putting everything into alignment boxes and thinking the writer or game company somehow condones some kind of generic good or evil behavior that manifests as a deity's teaching.

The problem with the drow comes from both tying black skin to being universally, inherently evil and from their (incredibly fetishized!) oppressive matriarchy being pretty misogynistic, given how rare matriarchies are in traditional d20 fantasy worlds.

It's an entire race of evil dark-skinned abusive women (and their men, who are variably an oppressed minority or presented as masochistic submissives), meant to be juxtaposed to their beautiful white-skinned surface kin whose women know their place. The traditional drow are awful - and they're also a D&Dism that falls completely flat in a Golarion meant to stand alone.

Its not like recent drows are any less evil than previously though as a society?

Like, main difference is that 3.5 pathfinder was like "GOOD DROW DON'T EXIST AT ALL, WE DON'T HAVE ANY DRIZZTS; DROW KILL EVERY GOOD DROW 100% PERFECTLY" which was rather silly on its own :p

Its not like recent drows are any less evil than previously though as a society?

Like, main difference is that 3.5 pathfinder was like "GOOD DROW DON'T EXIST AT ALL, WE DON'T HAVE ANY DRIZZTS; DROW KILL EVERY GOOD DROW 100% PERFECTLY" which was rather silly on its own :p

I haven't read it myself, but I believe CN drow are in Abomination Vaults.

Yeah and those are small relatively isolated local community. Not really much on the drow as whole in their big cities with state religion of demon worship

Like, main difference is that 3.5 pathfinder was like "GOOD DROW DON'T EXIST AT ALL, WE DON'T HAVE ANY DRIZZTS; DROW KILL EVERY GOOD DROW 100% PERFECTLY" which was rather silly on its own :p

Exactly. Which is why, in my [singular] experience, most of us ignored that silly aspect just like we are ignoring the newest ecological changes. YMMV

I'm pretty sure they retconned Erastil long before SKR left.

Perhaps but I do think the language and tone seemed to get a lot harsher and frankly a lot odder towards him after he left

And frankly with everything we know with what goes on behind the scenes now the idea that someone higher up would pin all the problamatic articles on the writer as if it was all his fault rather than something that was possibly mandated from higher up dosent seem all that far fetched now IMO.

That or as with certain other things the staff at the time were told to defend the articles whether they agreed with them or not.

I'm pretty sure they retconned Erastil long before SKR left.

I decided to do a quick look on the forums around this topic. There seemed to be posts around the time of the release of the original Kingmaker volume that had Erastil's misogyny in it, both by Sean himself and by James Jacobs, that were attempting to explain the perspective in the original article, but not outright saying it was incorrect/a mistake. The first examples I could find of Paizo staffers were from 2013, when both James Jacobs and Jessica Price commented on the topic. James Jacobs in particular outright said it was an error in the 2013 message. Presuming the Pathfinder Wiki is accurate, Sean K Reynolds left Paizo in March of 2014, a little over a full year on from the first comments about the article being a mistake. There may well have been earlier posts that I didn't see on my skim, or comments outside of the Paizo forums - but I don't think it's accurate to say that they waited for SKR to leave Paizo before they decided the misogyny was an error. James has certainly been more vocal about it since SKR left, but that's likely because people have changed their minds and gotten more vocal about the issue with the distance that 11 years or so will provide.

(I also know that James Jacobs does tend to read the forums quite a bit, so I do want to say that it seems very clear to me that he has changed his view substantially from when he wrote that original message in 2010, and I'm not bringing it up to focus on the comments he made over a decade ago. Everyone is entitled to change their mind, and I'm very glad that the folks who are involved in the Lost Omens setting have been open to changing their mind and implementing that in the setting! :) )

graystone wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?

I don't see a problem with either myself: deities should be multifaceted creatures and not everything about them SHOULD fit neatly in a single alignment box:

As one of the oldest human gods, it wouldn't be unusual for Erastil to be a bit more 'old school' or politically incorrect with his thinking: he gives unsolicited criticism and advocates for a simpler ways of life, free of the constraints of modern civilization. I'm not sure what exact issue there was in the lore so I can't really comment more.

The problem is that it then says “misogyny can be the conduct of a being of incarnate, cosmic Good.”

Erastil is slow to adopt to novelty but he's also aware of many, many worlds and people so he's not going to say "there is only one way to make it work" since many communities have made it work in a lots of situations by doing some different things.

Regarding the Drow thing, is there any reason we can't have light skinned Drow? They don't have to be super common, but I see no reason they shouldn't be pale like cave salamanders.

On a side tangent the nuclear family isn't all that traditional even to the cultures that claim it as traditional. A modern concept that replaced multigenerational family units and community based living.

In general, I imagine one reason Lore Eratta is more difficult for paizo then it is for the other guy, is because the other guy is way more detached from the community. They can afford to come up with something and just post a random blog post about it and go about their day.

Since Paizo caters to a smaller community and tends to be a bit more personal( active staff on the forum, big community playtest) it's much more elkkely that Paizo cares about potential blowback if the eratta is not handled well. Heck the mere thought of a policy change has created multiple forum threads, with various accusations being thrown at the company for daring to do better.

Can you imagine if that was an official statement on a blog post?

Plus official Lore Eratta probably wouldn't be that compelling and wouldn't be the most effective way to read Lore. At least in the easiest way possible were the Eratta looks like a series of patch notes.

"Erastil misogyny reduced by 15%

Fixed a bug where Saranrae worshippers spawned problematic radical stereotypes. "

( I would like to note this is a joke at the expense of the format. I find both of those subjects quite frustrating and I'm glad they are no longer parts of the lore/active in it)

Which means any new Lore will probably invite the commissioning of freelance writers or assigning of staff to write/rewrite patches of Lore in a more compelling way. Which could also be difficult.

I'd rather have explicit lore errata, than quietly dropping something from canon but us as readers not being sure what happened.

Example: the situation of Sarenrae worshipers in Taldor. Way back, it was prohibited to worship one of the most prominent deities of healing. Wow. Some scenarios even had it as a basis for their plot. Then some books later, they just don't even mention it anymore and you have to figure out that it got dropped from canon quietly. Which is just a janky experience.

So I'd rather have them say "hey we meant to say Erastil was big on family and staying close to your roots, simple rural life where it's good", not "the woman should stay in the kitchen".

I'd prefer that lore errata be explicit, and I think there is a very Paizo-consistent way this can be done. With sidebars.

In a newer product that mentions a topic (say, Sarenrae), include a sidebar that mentions, "Lore Errata: Sarenrae. Older Paizo products indicated worship of Sarenrae was prohibited in Taldor. We decided to move away from this because ... The current setting assumptions are that ..." This gives people clear guidance on what the current assumed setting includes, why the change has been made, and possibly some insights into how this aspect of the setting has evolved or is currently conceived of by the developers.

Personally, I love sidebars that explain developer thinking, whether about lore or about how specific rules are intended to function, what might be the intent of a specific adventure scene or NPC, etc. More, please!

CE version of Torius Vin does kinda need a lore errata though xP Like its really egregious mistake

I will never understand the obsession of always wanting to be 100% on 'the right side', as nothing is completely black and white, and moral standards will be different in five years anyway.

Good luck with retconning everything again and again.

I'd like to hope that looking back in 5 years time, the push for a more inclusive and accepting society has continued to happen and we've become accepting of changing things that'd be better off changed. Retconning everything again and again sounds like a strange way to describe "we realised that what we're doing is not great, and so have decided to change how we're doing it". The most popular suggestion in the thread, Cintra Bristol's, isn't even talking about going back to existing books and changing what is written there - just how to make it clear when the setting has been changed without an in-universe justification, and why. I think that's what most of us here want - an easy way to get everyone on the same page about what has changed in the setting, and why that change was made. Even by the disparaging sentiment expressed in your post, surely that'd be a good thing to have? If societal standards for what is acceptable have changed in 5 years time, it'd be good to have a mechanism to easily communicate errata to the setting. Similarly, the requests being made now are a result of our standards improving on these issues.

Slavery was never good.

It was accepted.

Big difference.

An obvious way to fix many of these issues is to remind people that deities are fallible and may not think through the implications of wrong beliefs until too many people take them too far.

For example, the apparent misogyny of Erastil may have started out as him answering "yes" to a question like "Should married people with children stay at home instead of going away on dangerous adventures?" It might be years or even decades before it becomes obvious that too many of his followers had gradually changed the "married people with children" reference in that question to "women".

There could well be other similar beliefs that have arisen among followers of good aligned deities that the deities in question have not yet been successful in highlighting as topics that need to be discussed, let alone calling out as heresies or other perversions of the faith. There is only so far that the teachings of a deity can advance beyond what his or her followers are ready to accept.